Head - Duke v17
Arms, torso, waist - Footloose
Legs - Dusty

Hat, machine gun - Marauder Inc.
Backpack - Flint

Mangler appeared in only one comic, Special Missions #13. This issue featured some of the best Larry Hama military storytelling that you'll ever see. Mangler was on mission with Dusty and Lightfoot that went sideways. He was a young, probationary member of the team who had nothing but complaints about Lightfoot's contribution to the objective, and Dusty was ready to wash him out. But in the end he did his job, and made the ultimate sacrifice so that the rest of the team could extract after completing their mission. For that alone he deserves a custom figure.

The figure came together serendipitously. I saw someone else's custom Mangler that used a head I thought would work really well due to the hair, and I had one available. When looking at in person, it seemed to small to really work, but I happen to glance at a pile of fodder figures and saw a new sculpt version of Duke that had a head that could work. While the hair isn't comic-accurate, it has the strong, square jawline that Mangler has in the comic. So I trimmed down the neck and made a ball joint out of Milliput.

I used mostly Footloose body parts to give Mangler a relatively generic infantry look (which drove the paint choices as well), but I used Dusty's legs. They not only provided the design features I was looking for (thigh pockets, pant legs tucked into boots), they were more substantial than Footloose's (Mangler is a pretty big guy), and it also seemed appropriate given Dusty's crucial role in the story.